Wilkinson and the making of a myth

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YOU PROBABLY WON’T REMEMBER an Australian children’s programme called The Magic Boomerang. “When this boomerang flies through the air . . . All Time Stands Still!” But that was exactly what happened at Telstra Stadium in Sydney with 26 seconds of extra time left to play in the rugby union World Cup final. Not a Magic Boomerang. A Magic Rugby Ball.

A goal in football is normally a hard, straight line, sometimes a brief arc. But a dropped goal in rugby takes for ever, an all-life-flashes- before-you length of time. Not a straight line but a parabola. And time stopped. Martin Johnson had